


All the Time in the World

by poisonedapple



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aging, Background Character Death, Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mortality, Post-Canon, Reminiscing, mentions of Keyleth/Kaylie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-03-30 12:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonedapple/pseuds/poisonedapple
Summary: Scanlan and Keyleth never really talked, when they were a part of Vox Machina.A slow burning friendship, but they've got the time.





	All the Time in the World

**Author's Note:**

> So since episode 56, Hope, I had been wondering how exactly Scanlan knew that Keyleth would have a longer lifespan. I had the first scene planned for the last two years now - the rest was a a surprise.
> 
> Spoilers for more or less the entire series, but mostly vaguely.

 

Scanlan had the 'Tome of Leadership and Influence' in his hands and he had been stroking the cover and spine for well over an hour, a look of awe upon his face.

 

"Scanlan!" Keyleth said quite suddenly, fists tight at her sides as she marched over to him.  "If you have a moment, I would like to talk with you."

 

Scanlan looked up with a look of surprise, before giving her his most dazzling smile.  "Yes, of course Key-leth."  He enunciated the syllables of her name separately.  She hated when he did that - it felt like he was mocking her.  He knew that and he was, at least a little bit.  In his most charmingly disarming voice, he said, "For you I have all the time in the world."

 

When she opened her mouth, however, he extended his index finger.

 

"Just one moment," he continued.  And then he opened the book.  Golden light spilled from the pages as he flipped through the pages and found the first one.  His own eyes shimmered with their own golden light and Keyleth could feel a powerful force binding Scanlan to the book.  He read a while, until the light faded - a flash of a third eye on his forehead - before marking his place in the book with his thumb as he shut it.  "Yes, what is it?  Be a little quick, because I'm kind of on a deadline here now.  Hope you weren't having second thoughts because it's a bit too late, I'm afraid."

 

Keyleth snorted loudly through her nose.

 

"No, Scan-lan," she said crisply and clenched her jaw a moment before finally she said, "How did you know?"

 

Before he could ask, "Know what?", Keyleth continued:  "How did you know that I am going to live - as you put it - "Many centuries."

 

"Oh," Scanlan said.  He looked a bit sheepish - but only for a moment.  "That."

 

Keyleth put her hands on her hips and waited.

 

"I'm a bard and - and, very, very old.  I know these things.  About.  Druid stuff.  Asharre...y stuff." 

 

Keyleth scowled and ground her heels into the ground a bit.  If she ever wanted an honest answer from Scanlan, she had better get it from him now because after he finished the book she would never have any hope with him.  He'd be unstoppable.

 

"Vax told me?" He tried but she shook her head.  Keyleth knew Vax would never.  "Ok, ok, ok.  No.  Fine it was... Well, I saw you come in and I was feeling horny so I followed you-, OK ow, shit," Scanlan swore as she smacked the top of his head.  "Fine, fine, you looked like you'd been crying so I was coming to check on you and I overheard."

 

Keyleth paused at that and Scanlan saw her hesitance and took the moment to smile kindly, innocently at her.  His teeth were white and he was so - so, so charming.  Keyleth could feel her resolve crumbling and she wasn't even sure if this was just another lie.  She sighed.

 

"Scanlan...  whatever the truth is.  Never do it again."  She turned and started to stalk off like he had something to fear from her.  "I mean it." 

 

Scanlan watched her go, a thousand things to say but he didn't, and let his book fall open again and he resumed reading.

 

* * *

 

 

It was dark as Scanlan shuffled on his way to the bathroom and he paused in front of Keyleth's door.  He could hear her sniffing occasionally and the shuffling of sheets.  He hesitated, but couldn't bring himself to knock.  On his way back to the bathroom he gave Keyleth's room and door wide berth.  He felt guilty for it, but not enough to go back.

 

In the morning, they'd be going to to the Halls of Pandemonium  to retrieve Grog.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Wow," said Keyleth.

 

"Yeah," Scanlan breathed.  "Wow.

 

Their chins were up as they stared at the clock tower that Percy had finally finished after years of slow building and tinkering, listened as it's chime stopped echoing in the ground and the figures of Vox Machina attached to it stopped moving.  Never had they imagined what a masterpiece it would be finished.  It was Percy's greatest work, what he deserved to be remembered for.  They stood so long, admiring the tower from all angles, after the hour had passed that another hour resounded and each of the figures of Vox Machina reenacted bits and pieces of what they had all accomplished and lost when they'd adventured together.

 

"Damn."  Scanlan said as the tole of clock finally ended once again.  He looked at the hands of clock and watched the second hand tick by so slowly.  Slowly, slowly, the time was passing for him.  For Keyleth too.  And yet is was going so much faster for the rest of Vox Machina.

 

"Damn," Keyleth agreed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Hey," said Scanlan in passing. "It's been a hundred years.  You read that book yet?"

 

Keyleth smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.  "No.  There was a young sorcerer in Pyrah that expressed interest in it so I let her read it first.  I've got it back now though, so perhaps next century."

 

Scanlan sighed and shrugged, not caring so much amidst the sombre party around them as some halfing that Scanlan didn't even know spoke with cheeks shiny with his tears.  When he finally (finally) finished, Keyleth took some unspoken cue walk forward and take his place.  Pike's grip on his hand tightened and Vex closed the gap from where Keyleth had been beside him before.  Keyleth gave her eulogy for Lady Kima of Vord, her eyes solemn and resolute.  Her words were beautiful, passionate.

 

They four were the last surviving members of Vox Machina (well, and the bear).  And now the number of friends they had shared when they had been whole had dwindled further.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Keyleth!" Pike said in excitement as Keyleth entered the Slayer's Cake.  It'd been a while, though perhaps not that long with the time the three of them had  Not even a year.  Pike eagerly embraced Keyleth, giving her a strong squeeze.  Despite her mixed deep and forest gnome ancestry making her more age quickly than Scanlan, Pike was still so fucking strong.  Scanlan didn't know how she did it.  He was only 264 himself but he had half the energy of his wife.

 

"Pike!" Keyleth gasped at the force Pike held her with but she returned the hug tightly.  "It's been so long!  I've missed you!"

 

When Pike finally let Keyleth go, the two looked at each other with misty eyes and sober smiles.  Keyleth, of course, had fared better than the Trickhalt family.  Hardly a change in her face, apart from the loss of baby fat, she looked much the same as she had when Scanlan had first met her.

 

"You've cut your hair again!"  Pike said, running her hands through Keyleth's pixie cut.  Scanlan frowned as he looked at Pike's hair - the white so much duller than it had when it had first turned white.  "It looks great!" 

 

"Thanks," Keyleth said, blushing and ducking her eyes away from Pike and landing on Scanlan.

 

"Key-leth," Scanlan said awkwardly, nodding his head.

 

"Scanlan."

 

"Bearclaw?" he offered, pulling one out of the display case, and Keyleth accepted.  That was the extent of their interaction the rest of the night.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"I think talking to her will do you some good," Kaylie said.  "You're the last two left, of Vox Machina.  You need to put in more of an effort, 'cause she's trying.  Been trying."

 

Scanlan sighed.  "I know," he admitted, rubbing his face with his hands.

 

"You can't just keep pushing everyone away because Pike, -".

 

"Stop." Scanlan said.  "I'll talk to her.  So stop."

 

Kaylie shrugged and jerked her thumb over her shoulder.  "You get in there then.  I'll just... go out and fuck about and give you guys some time to talk."

 

She left and Scanlan trailed after her, watched her leave out the front door, before turning to Keyleth waiting at his dining room table with a mug of hot chocolate cupped in her hands.

 

"Sorry 'bout that,"  Scanlan said as he sat down with a cup of tea.  "Slept late."

 

 "It's fine," Keyleth said without looking up from her mug, not questioning the obvious lie.  Scanlan didn't even know why he bothered to try to hide it.

 

They were silent awhile - a long while, both only occasionally taking sips of their drinks until their drinks were tepid and they couldn't bear to try and drink them.

 

"Scanlan," Keyleth broke the silence.  She looked up for the first time since Scanlan had come in.  "When we saw Percy's clock tower finished for the first, what were you feeling?  I know what I was feeling, but what were you feeling then?"

 

Scanlan stood and refreshed their drinks as he mulled it over.  It'd been so long ago.  So long.  A couple centuries at least.

 

"It's amazing, that clock tower, isn't it?" Scanlan said.  Keyleth nodded.  "I'm glad that that is what remains of Percy's work now.  I'm glad that will be part of his legacy, since that had been so important for him."

 

The silence stretched when he wasn't speaking, as Keyleth listened.

 

"He put most of his life into that tower.  More time than he ever did those guns of his,"  Scanlan said slowly.  "So much of his time.  But only a fraction of mine.  A blip in your life.  You should know this.  We stood in the middle town and the rest of the town bustled around us without stop.  Because they don't have the time, the humans, to stop.  Their time is so short.  I had the time.  That's all.  I just felt... time, looking at that clock tower Percy made."

 

 Keyleth circled the rim of her mug with her finger before taking a long drink.  "Yeah.  Time."

 

There was chocolate on her lip and Scanlan bit his lip to keep from laughing and shook his head.

 

"My long lifespan upset me, after my mom's death.  It felt like such a long time, to be forced to keep going and losing people I loved or else die young and unfulfilled.  I used to envy the humans who live such short, but full lives.  I was 69 when we met - an old man by human standards but I felt unfulfilled, hadn't accomplished anything worthwhile."  He couldn't look at Keyleth as he spoke, looked anywhere but her direction.  "I wanted to tell you not to do it.  Back when I first heard you tell Vax you'd live for so long.  To just fuck off on your Aremente.  It wouldn't be worth it and I'm sorry you're still here and that you'll be here a while, watching everyone die.  I'm sorry it's me that you're left with.  It should have been any one of others, they'd have done something worthwhile with all the extra time."

 

Keyleth reached across the table and took both his hands in both of hers.  "I always knew, when we became a family, that it'd be you and me as the last one's standing.  In the best case scenario."  Her hands her warm from holding the hot chocolate.  He held them back after a while.d

 

"I'm glad you're here with me, Scanlan."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"You intimidated the hell out of me," Keyleth confessed with a laugh.

 

"ME?  Intimidate YOU?  I was just a little boy who sings at things!"  Scanlan said with sincere incredulity, hand on his chest.

 

"Sing at things?  A LITTLE BOY?"  Keyleth gasped.  "You could convince anyone damn thing of ANYTHING even without anything arcane.  It was terrifying, I never had any idea what was going to come out of your mouth with that silver tongue of yours."   She shook her head.  "Unbelievable." 

 

"What about you?  Normally you were just some dork who couldn't talk for shit, and then you'd change into all these things and use all these spells.  It was CRAZY, I had no idea what you were. I felt like someone had to be putting me on, because you made no sense at all.  I avoided you, for the most part, because I had no idea what to make of you."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"I think you might be more elf than just half," Scanlan said without thinking much of it.  They were sitting in the Westruun branch of the Slayer's Cake, bothering the bakers just trying to do their job in the kitchens.  They'd been meeting like this, in places, for a couple decades now, on a weekly basis.  Just to talk.

 

Keyleth looked up from the mound of dough she'd been kneading by hand for the last ten minutes.  Flour dusted her face as much as it had on her hands and apron, settled into fine lines of her face.  Scanlan couldn't even tell that the lines were there without the flour.

 

"Yeah," Keyleth agreed as she resumed kneading.  "We consider most of the Air Ashari as half-elf, but to be honest it's hard to say precisely how much human or elf any of us really are."

 

Scanlan traced the grains of the wood table in front of him.  "Full-blooded elves live a long time."

 

Keyleth made a non-committal noise.

 

"He shrugged and took the dismal of a conversation Keyleth didn't want to have.  "I don't think I ever visited your hometown, have I?"

 

"Don't think you have." Keyleth answered as the dough made a loud thwack against the counter.  "You only ever saw Pyrah and only when it was in ruins."

 

"Oh.  Wow.  You remember that?"

 

"I wrote it all down."  Keyleth seem pleased with her dough and set it aside to rise.

 

"Is that why you were always writing notes?"  Scanlan asked with sudden realization.  "Not to remember for the next day, but for now?"

 

Keyleth shrugged.  "Both."

 

Scanlan mused on that for a bit.  "Sorry I never participated in any of your trails, for the Aremente.  I should have been there.  For any part of it.  Things might have gone differently, if I had."

 

"Different could have been worse than what happened," Keyleth answered shortly.

 

"I'd like to visit Zephrah sometime."

 

Keyleth smiled.  "Anytime is good.  Now's good."

 

"Now? Don't you have to finish your bread?"

 

"I'll finish it," piped a harried baker, eager to leap at an opportunity to get rid of Keyleth who, while the owner of the Slayer's Cake, was also only average at best at baking and a hindrance in the busy kitchen.

 

"Sure, let's go." Scanlan agreed with a shrug.  He was 416 and he felt every bit his age - he had all the time in the world to fuck off on a sudden vacation.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Can I borrow your journals?  The ones from our time with the rest,"  Scanlan asked.  "I wrote down all the exciting, thrilling bits for 'In The Belly of Dragons,' but.... I'm forgetting all the moments that made it all worthwhile."

 

"Sure," Keyleth said easily.  "I just re-read those journals myself."  She paused.  "It only took a couple days to read through our time as Vox Machina."

  

 

* * *

 

 

"We used to be the S.H.I.T.!  I forgot about that," Scanlan said with a laugh.  They'd been reminiscing for the past four hours - about the the cannonball contest and finding the first flying carpet and that time they'd put all of their Vestiges together in hopes they'd do something, just recounting the happy, stupid moments of the past that were just barely memories - moments Scanlan might have forgotten if Keyleth's journals hadn't jogged them for him.  "Was it you or Percy that objected to the name?"

 

"Both of us," Keyleth laughed, cheeks red.  "And Tiberius.  We had families and... and blah blah blah to think about."

 

"Blah blah blah?"

 

"Blah blah blah."

 

They laughed, cheeks red, and shook their heads at the absurdity of youth.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

"You first," Scanlan said with an impish grin.

 

Keyleth narrowed her eyes at him.  "How about together?"

 

"Fine," Scanlan agreed.  "On three?"

 

They counted.  One.  Two.  Three.

 

And they downed the shots of four century old Sand-kheg's Hide they'd dug out of Grog's old things, absolutely certain nothing could go wrong.

 

Things absolutely did go wrong, but they made for very good memory.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Wind rushed underneath their wings as they flew in the forms of a bronze and copper dragon, sharing stories of how they'd come across the dragons of their respective forms in the centuries they'd traveled and adventured apart.

 

"I have a confession," Keyleth said, her words reverberating the earth as they landed.  "Kaylie and I are... kinda seeing each other."

 

"What the fuck!"  Scanlan screeched and let out a plume of acid at Keyleth, his shot going wild - mostly on purpose.  He'd more or less guessed.  But still.  What the fuck.

 

"We see each other a lot lately and we've been getting along.  It's a little unorthodox, but we're enjoying each other's company all the same."  Keyleth said with a satisfied look on her dragon face. 

 

Kaylie was far from the first person that Keyleth had seen since Vax, so Keyleth was hardly rebounding on her.  They were, technically, close in age.  They were happy.  And Scanlan, for the most part, did feel relieved.  He trusted them both with the other.  He was glad.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 Zephrah was a lot nicer than Scanlan had thought it would be - mostly he'd thought there'd only be bland things to eat and sleeping on a mat on the floor.  But it was a lot more civilized than that, and the view was spectacular.   Scanlan visited regularly these days, breathing in deeply the mountain air.  It felt purifying.

 

Keyleth walked carefully as she lead him, his arm tucked in with hers, as they came upon Keyleth's Raven Sun Tree that she'd grown through the years.

 

"Scanlan?  I have a confession."

 

"Not again."

 

She laughed, shook her head.  Her hair blew with the breeze, still so red.  "I'm.... keeping my eye out for the next Voice of the Tempest right now."

 

Scanlan frowned.  She was only four hundred and twenty years old.  "That's... quite the early retirement?"

 

"I won't find anyone for a while, but I'm watching and seeing who'd be happy to take the mantle...,"  Keyleth said.  "I've made adjustments to the Aremente, so the next Headmasters won't have to go through what I... what we had to go through.  I can't say it's that much easier, but much less life-threatening.  And they'll be much more prepared for what the Aremente really is than I ever was.

 

"But, after I find the next voice... After I've installed them and they've had the title awhile...."  Keyleth dropped their linked arms to take both his hands in hers.  "Scanlan, I've done some research.  I know, more or less, how to join myself with my Sun Tree."  Their eyes trailed over to the tree.  "It won't be for a couple hundred years, maybe more..., but when the time comes, I've decided to... sunset into the tree."

 

"That's.... Keyleth.  The Sun Tree in Whitestone... It's thousands of years old.  Maybe Tens of thousands." 

 

She nodded.  "Yeah, it is."

 

He sighed and hung his head in acceptance.  "I don't know how I'll explain to the rest when we're partying it up in the afterlife that our Key-leth may never join us."

 

She smirked.  "I'm sure you'll thinking of something." 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Watcha reading?" Scanlan asked, sitting up slowly as he rubbed sleep from his eyes.  He'd been bed-bound for the two months.  He'd probably be for the rest of his life, with what time he had left.

 

Keyleth looked up from her book, blinking but she didn't appear startled.  Her hair had yet to start going silver and the lines on her face were only faint, but her age showed in her eyes and disposition.

 

"The 'Tome of Leadership and Influence,'" Keyleth answered quietly, and then a small and sly smile crossed her lips as she lifted up a finger, silencing him before he could say anything.  "Just one moment."

 

Scanlan shook is head in amusement, snorting and then laughing to himself.  He rested his chin in the palms of his hands, elbows on his knees, and made himself look positively angelic for waiting as he watched her flip through the pages.  She looked like she was almost to the end and her eyes were wide and something arcane swirled in them as she read.

 

"You were saying?" Keyleth said with a laugh as she shut the book with finality, sparks scattering from the pages just as they had when Scanlan had finished the book himself over four hundred years ago.

 

 "Good book?"

 

She smiled, shaking her head and shrugging.  "You gave it to me so long ago, I thought I should read it so we could have something different to talk about."

 

"You didn't have to go to the trouble of reading that old book, just to talk with me, Key-leth," he said, separating the syllables of her name in affection as he always did and her smile grew.  "We can talk about anything and that'd be enough.  We're old friends.  I'm just happy with your company.  I have all the time in the world for you."

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up cutting a scene where Keyleth and Scanlan talked about his year away because it didn't flow and I'm bitter over it.
> 
>  
> 
> What if I said that I also had a Modern!AU idea that examined Keyleth and Scanlan's friendship as well. Would anyone be interested or am I kidding myself? lmao. 
> 
> smh, me with the weirdest rare-pair friendships.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Please kudo/comment if you enjoyed. ^^;


End file.
